 It is time now for me to introduce our featured speaker, Dr. Robert Emmons. Dr. Emmons is a professor in the psychology department of UC Davis and one of the leading scholars in the positive psychology movement. He is also editor in chief of the Journal of Positive Psychology and the author of books including this one called Thanks, How Practicing Gratitude Can Make You Happier. You may have seen his work on gratitude in major media publications such as The Washington Post, Newsweek, The New York Times, through highly focused cutting-edge studies, he hopes to shed important scientific light on the nature of gratitude, its causes, and its consequences. Please welcome to the stage now Dr. Robert Emmons. Thank you, Pamela. Thank you also to Karen and Jody for arranging all of this. And it's great to see so many of you out there tonight, so many friends also. It makes a little bit unnerving. Usually when you're a speaker, you go far away and you talk to people you'd never see before and you'll never see again. And it makes it a lot easier. It's a lot tougher when there are people you're going to see tomorrow or the case of my wife in about an hour and a half, so it's going to be a little bit trickier. I was told there'd be quite a few of you here tonight, and I didn't quite believe it. But in fact, they were telling the truth. But isn't tonight the night that Oliver Stone is talking at the Mondavi Center? You came here thinking he was going to be here, right? So he's not here. I guess the tickets were sold out, right? That's why he came for this one. I'm glad you came because I want to talk to you tonight about a topic that's been interesting to me for a number of years that I've been doing research on that I think has a lot of relevance, particularly in today's day and age, as we look for tools and techniques and tips to give to our children, but also things that we need to consider ourselves because we can't give to our children what we don't have ourselves, and so I think the topic of gratitude cuts across age ranges, lifespan from, and we've done research on kids from people from the age of eight to all the way up to 80. So I want to talk to you about some of that research tonight, but also really just have a discussion about the nature and the topic of gratitude, what it is, why I think it's important, why I think there needs to be more discussion about it. And what I've tried to do through my program in the last decade is to both present it as a scientific topic, but also to try to increase social discourse about the nature of gratitude and why it matters and why it's been so ignored and perhaps how we can get more of it. So without further ado, let's see if we can make this work. Here's some headlines, it's one of the fun things about doing research in a topic that the media is interested in, is that you see the results trickle down from academics, from academia down through the media. And so here's a few headlines, hope you can read all of those. Want to be happier? It says be more grateful. Teaching gratitude, bringing happiness to children. The formula for happiness, gratitude plays a part. How about the first one? Key to happiness is gratitude and men may be locked out. Uh-oh. Gratitude log, welcome to the happiest place on the internet actually. And then thanks how practicing gratitude can make you happier. What do all of these have in common? Gratitude, very good. Yes, they're all in the same font, right? That's also good. What else? Happiness, yes, thank you. So happier, right? Gratitude is something that potentially can make us happier. It's something that we can use as a way of controlling our mind so that we can achieve greater levels of happiness. So I've been involved in that happiness research for a number of years actually going back to graduate school before we even called it happiness. Back in those days we called it subjective well-being. Much more impressive sounding, right? Not so squishy, kind of more rigorous sounding topic. And there's quite an industry about happiness now based upon the research of a number of eminent scientists around the world. And there's no shortage of ideas that the science has been taken down to the level of the public and beyond that to practitioners who offer suggestions and tips in the happiness industry of how to become happier in simple formulas like happiness in 12 steps or five keys or seven secrets in three hours or 30 days or whatever. There's all sorts of advice out there about how to become happier. And I've played a little bit of a role in that because I've offered the idea that gratitude can be one strategy when it's practiced and implemented intentionally can actually measurably increase people's levels of happiness. So far so good. However, tonight I'm gonna announce to you that we've gotten it all wrong. Well, maybe not all of it, but a good part of it because gratitude, it seems to me, is much more than a tactic or a strategy for becoming happier. If we leave it at that, we're really missing probably 90% of what gratitude really is. And that is, it goes much deeper, much more significant at several levels, the topic of gratitude that as a virtue, philosophers, writers, theologians have speculated on the nature of gratitude for centuries, long before the happiness gurus came along. Gratitude was seen as an important element of human flourishing as a virtue, as an excellence, what it means to live a good life, that we want to be more grateful, we want other people to be more grateful. Stronger even is the idea that ingratitude is a stronger vice than gratitude is a virtue. One of the worst things that anybody can say about you is that you're an ingrate or ungrateful. Philosophers have called it the most serious human sin that people can commit, the worst form of depravity and very powerful statements about ingratitude. So as a way to achieve happiness, it seems like we're missing out something if we're just reducing it to a technique or strategy. By way of illustration, let's consider the moral force to gratitude, okay? Let's consider a couple of cases. On the left and one on the right. Each of two siblings receive more than adequate parental care when they're growing up with regard to basic needs, food, clothing, shelter. Not only that, their parents provided them with loving care and affection, attended to their moral development, emotional development, spiritual development. On all levels, the parents did everything that one could reasonably expect, perhaps even more than that. Now the siblings are grown up and prospering doing very well. The parents are aging and in need of assistance. Suppose further that both children are able and willing to contribute to the care of their parents. But one does so willingly and the other does so grudgingly. It seems plausible to maintain that they should do something, provide at least in part for the care of their parents. But you would say that the one who does so grudgingly, something's not quite right. Something may be amiss and has in some way failed, perhaps, when it comes to gratitude as a feeling which might motivate the behavior to take care of the parents. So, as this example indicates, it might make a difference whether one carries out one's debts willingly or grudgingly. Say, well, what difference is there to make? They're doing what they're supposed to do. They're providing, helping. The motion doesn't matter, does it. But it just seems that doing so happily versus doing so grudgingly, moral philosophers would claim that the childhood does that grudgingly has somehow failed in some way, shape, or form. And the problem is, is that we generally assume that the person can control their feelings in this situation. They should wanna do so happily and willingly. But the reality is that feelings are not easily under one's control. We can't just will a feeling. We can't just wake up today and say, I'm gonna be happy today. Or I'm not gonna be depressed today. If we were, there'd be no need for pharmaceuticals, for depression. Or I'd say, I just wake up, I'm gonna be happy today and no longer be depressed. Or I'm gonna just wake up today and be grateful today as a feeling. We just don't have control over these feelings. So, making gratitude, reducing it to a feeling or a technique for happiness, I'm saying really short changes the nature of gratitude. And especially the moral force of something as powerful as gratitude. All right, suppose the children give support, one willingly, one grudgingly. But the reason why the one does it grudgingly is because he wants other people to think well of him. Maybe other siblings or friends or other people and see, look all I do for my parents. You say, well, they're still providing the benefit. They're still repaying the debt that they might owe. But just something seems a little bit askew, right? So there's a lot of moral considerations when it comes to help giving, receiving help, the motivation for it, the emotions that underlie it, all of which have to do with gratitude. Because much of human life is about giving, receiving benefits, giving benefits, repaying those benefits. There's a lot of different emotions that go along with those. There's a lot of sorts of debts one owes and how one enters into that dynamic says a great deal about the individual and about their character. All right, here's another case. Suppose you are drowning and Simmons rushes into the water and pulls you to safety. Do you owe Simmons gratitude? I can't hardly see you. How many would say yes? Raise your hand. Okay, yes, you would think so, right? I mean, that'd be pretty important thing. Somebody saves your life. You owe them significant. You may never actually be able to repay that debt of gratitude that you owe Simmons. So that seems reasonable enough. But suppose that Simmons regards you as an enemy. He admits that if he had known who the drowning person was, he would not have attempted the rescue. Hmm, well, that makes a little bit different now. Doesn't say, well, I'm not so sure. I would be grateful, but why not? Still save your life, right? I mean, you can't negate that, although he may not have if he had known who you were, so his motives were maybe a little bit suspect. Still his action maybe at some cost to himself jumped in, he could have drowned himself, and so on. And so knowing his motivation doesn't detract from the situation and reduce the quality of the act. So you would say that gratitude is still deserved in this situation. However, let's say because he's your enemy, he saves you from drowning only so that he can kill you more slowly and more painfully, right? So now you think, well, maybe I don't have a reason for gratitude, it shouldn't be due in that case. Well, anyway, that's kind of a dumb example, but it still shows, there might be some parallels somehow in life, that gratitude is a morally complex state and virtue, so discussion of it is not easily reduced to simple politeness, saying thank you, feeling gratitude, feeling even appreciation, those are all elements of it, but those are just small elements and there's many, many more components and elements and layers and levels to gratitude, and as I look at it and study it and learn more about it, I continue to appreciate more and more the complexity of the concept of gratitude. So there was an article in a scientific journal, a philosophical journal actually called Ethics and the author gave several different reasons for why a person ought to be grateful because it's the right thing to do. We owe people gratitude, right, when they do things for us or have done things historically, so our lives are better now than they were hundreds of years ago. There's various ethics there, such as an ethic of care when you want to promote a special relationship, you want to show gratitude toward that person. Communal relationships, there's a cycle there of giving, taking, receiving, repaying, and so gratitude contributes to that and oils the wheels of reciprocity, so that's all good stuff and there's perfectionistic reasons, which is largely what we've looked at in terms of gratitude. We want to develop virtues or prevent vices, primarily happiness, the happiness has become the ultimate good, we want our children to become happier. What's the best way to do so? Well, one way to do so is to practice gratitude. You say, Professor, please, it's Friday night that's way too complicated. I didn't come to hear a philosophy lecture and you're right, so we'll say that for later on in the talk is what we'll do. Let me instead give you a quote from a contemporary philosopher that you might recognize. That's Ben Stein, an economist, actor, philosopher, writer, and so on. And he said this about, well, let me first preface it by saying that, so being in the finance business, people would often ask them questions about how to invest money, how to make money, how to get rich quick, right? And he would say this to them. You know, I really can't tell you anything in a few minutes that will give you any advice about how to be rich, but I can tell you how to feel rich. He says, which is far better than being rich, be grateful. It's the only totally reliable get rich quick scheme. He says, gratitude is riches. And he says, better yet, it's tax free, right? He knows something about taxes and paying taxes and so on. So, notice he doesn't say, feel grateful, you know, and you'll feel happy. He says, be grateful, which is, there's a difference there between being the trait, the disposition, being a grateful person versus feeling gratitude. Feeling gratitude less under a person's control. I submit, being grateful is something that potentially is under a person's control if they can work at it and develop it. But let me tell you first the sorts of things that I've been doing. And many of you know this because I've been doing this for a while and there's been some publicity. And when I started this research about a dozen years ago, I had two primary questions. Number one is, could gratitude be cultivated on a regular basis? Either the actions of gratitude, the feeling of gratitude, the thoughts of gratitude. Can people cultivate a way of life that would be characterized by gratitude or gratefulness in a way or another? And if they could, are there measurable effects on their functioning effectiveness in life? Happiness, yes, well-being, school performance, relationship satisfaction, perhaps health outcomes, maybe even longevity. Could any of these be influenced by a person's level of gratitude and their practice of gratitude? So we did a number of studies where we actually asked people to keep gratitude journals or gratitude lists. We called this as Pamela mentioned, she was involved in her own gratitude list. Counting blessings or counting burdens. So you would count blessings, we asked people to go home and write down up to five things in their lives for which they were grateful or thankful, whether it happened that day or in the past or just something they were focused on and thinking about. So it's an experiment. So there has to be a comparison group. Not everybody can be in the gratitude group. So the comparison was people were writing down things going wrong every day, hassles we call them, or burdens, all the bad stuff. Issues, finance, I'll show you some examples shortly. And we asked people to do this over extended period of time. We randomly assigned them to different groups and said, okay, you guys on this side of the room, you'll be the gratitude group. You write down five things that went well that you're grateful for. You guys in the middle, you'll be the hassles group. And you guys on that side, you'll be a third group, do something totally different, maybe a true control group and then have three different comparison conditions. While people were doing that, we were asking them to tell us what their moods were during the day, stressed, unhappy, happy, so on. Physical health, were you noticing any physical health complaints, aches, pains, flus, colds, sleep, how much sleep did you get last night? Did you wake up and feel refreshed this morning? So a lot of different health outcome, exercise. We measured basically everything related to mental health and physical health that we could do on a short, 10 minutes per day rating form that people were using. We asked how your relationship is going. Were you getting along with people? Were you helpful? Were you feeling close, connected, or isolated, lonely from other people? So over a two, three week, 10 week period, we would have a comparison between the groups on these various outcomes to see if was there a difference if people were keeping a grad two journal versus keeping a Hassel's journal. So these were random assignment, placebo controlled experimental trials. That's a very impressive sounding, isn't it? I mean, this is real science. Anyway, it is, but in the results were kind of interesting. Let me give you some illustrations first. By the way, we never had anyone in either of the groups, especially though in that burdens or Hassel's group, any problem coming up with examples of stuff going wrong in their lives. And I'll talk more about that a little bit later. Okay, so here are some illustrations of what people find hassling. So, yeah, so the first days were with college students at UC Davis. And you know, they have college student issues by roommates, for example. Having to buy a Mother's Day card at the last minute, you know, dang, another Mother's Day. Here we go again, you know, and probably had to ask mom for money to buy the Mother's Day card and so on. Let's see, yes, I mean, so these are some of my favorites, you can see why. I like this one because it's actually, I think it was a student in taking him a class of mine. And so she said, or he said, a girl next to me brought his son to class and all he did was make noise and I could barely hear the lecture, which was kind of ironic because the very next thing they wrote down on the form was having to listen to a boring lecture. So what's the big deal, right? You're not missing much. Okay, on the other hand, you have a number of more pleasant, positive, whether you call them gratitudes or blessings or whatever your favorite word is of these lists that people were making, that my in-laws live only 10 minutes away. See, I always think that's interesting that it wasn't on the other list, right? You know, I think, man, warmth of sun on my skin. People get grateful over very little things. Earwax, you know, I guess. I like the next one because they listed three things in this order. It rained. Oh, I heard we were gonna be great grandparents again. And by the way, my checkbook balance, like they're all equal in their importance. All right, freedom, living in the United States. It was around Halloween time, so the person was grateful that they saw little kids come in their costumes. Grateful for being, I don't even have to say anything. You guys figure all this stuff out, right? The last person, every day she talked about, in fact, the only thing she wrote each day on the form was my life. My life, I wonder, why is she not elaborating a little bit? Because we find that when people elaborate, they derive more benefits from this practice. And then the final day she did, she said, I'm grateful for my life, considering that I almost lost it because of domestic violence. So a brush with losing something, of course, could be a very potent way of developing gratitude. Okay, so what did we find? Well, again, this is not a novel or a headline news, newsy, but we did find significant benefits in three domains. Psychologically, when people are keeping gratitude journals, they feel more alive, alert, awake, greater levels of positive, high engagement, positive feelings. We found some physical benefits. Oh, by the way, in terms of negative, we didn't necessarily find a reduction in negative feelings. In fact, the very first study I did, I found when people were keeping gratitude journals, they actually were angrier than people in the other conditions. I thought, what am I doing? I'm making people mad here by having to keep a journal. You know, they think it's stupid, they don't wanna do it. I don't know whether it was a legitimate finding or just one of these chance things but what I saw happening in additional studies was that gratitude seemed to be magnifying lots of different feelings. People were just becoming more alive, more alert, more awake and so depending on the stuff that's going on in their lives, they could report more of all sorts of emotions. People were exercising more, spending more time exercising actually and sleeping better, more per night, half hour more per night and waking up and feeling more refreshed the next day just by keeping a journal. And remember, these people are randomly assigned to these groups so they're not starting off exercising more, sleeping better, something changes as a function of gratitude journaling. And then interpersonally we found some benefits too that people reported becoming more helpful, more connected, closer to others, less lonely and isolated. People who knew them well would say that, they weren't just saying about themselves, oh yeah, I feel closer to my children now or my boss or whatever. People were saying, oh no, you're my husband. I don't know what you did to him. I know he's been filling out these forms in the study of yours, but all of a sudden he's doing yours, becoming more helpful. So people were noticing the changes as well. So far so good, but going back to the premise I started with, this is all about personal benefits, about primarily about increasing positive functioning, happiness. This is what I call gratitude light, L-I-T-E. It's writing down stuff in your life. And we don't even, some of the studies we didn't even give instructions to activate gratitude. We would say write down five things that went well today or five things that were gifts. Think about gifts that you received today. That's actually a little bit closer to gratitude. But other people have used this method and they focus on what's called the three good things exercise. And the list that people write when you ask them to be grateful, they wind up looking like just things that people are happy about. There doesn't seem to be anything unique about gratitude when they're asked in these very generic ways. So we didn't know if the findings were due to just elevating good feelings in general because when you're focusing on the good stuff it should have an effect impact on you versus focusing on the hassles. Or was there some unique contribution to gratitude? We did through some statistical analyses figure out that yes it was largely gratitude. But I think still we were just really at the tip of the iceberg there scratching the surface about the real meaning of gratitude which again I believe goes much deeper than just feeling grateful. It's not just the feeling, it's really a state of being, a disposition, a trait that can be developed. We then attempted some extensions and replications with a variety of other groups particularly students and along with a collaborator of mine on the East Coast whose wife was a principal and that helps out when you're trying to do research in schools. And we did an intervention with sixth and seventh graders. I know he looks small for a sixth or seventh grader and he's not, that was my older son when he was on his first day of kindergarten. So he was sixth. He just looked cuter than I thought than the sixth grade especially with student athletes who just worked so hard in practice for years their sport at some point it's no longer fun they give it up. Part of his due to burnout they showed that gratitude actually can reduce the amount of burnout that athletes feel, students feel. So that's all good stuff, right? There's a educator, really she was a psychologist in Australia which has developed a intervention for looking at gratitude and academic outcomes. Does it actually influence the learning process? And there's not a whole lot published so far. She's done a little bit of preliminary work but this was in a university setting where she could show that gratitude when it's chosen amongst practices that were offered to the students as part of an integrated learning and inner attitude they could choose to adopt a practice which would change their attitude toward the material in the course. It had an effect on their ability to study and also their performance in the class. This you can't see it's too small but she's basically trying to set up a contrast to them to show them that look there's the usual state of affairs in classrooms whether high schools or universities, right? Complaint dissatisfaction, what's more common? Complaint dissatisfaction or gratitude? Well you're all here tonight because you know it's this one, right? You're trying to figure out how to get that one. Well and so she says, so she's trying to show them, okay let's look at gratitude and it's opposite. Let's look at the various features of it. There's thoughts, things you say to yourself. This was in the context of having to sit through a boring lecture. So they're asked to adopt one of two mindsets in the context of listening through, listening to a boring lecture. So what are the things that people say to themselves when they're in the boring lecture? Well, why do I have to be here? What's the point of learning all this stuff anyway, right? How dare they ask me to pay fees for this? Yeah, I said, yeah, no, right? Teach me this stuff and I gotta pay for it at the same time, it's crazy. So given those thoughts, you know, their emotions are gonna be bored, angry, frustrated, physical state, sleepy, tense, slumped over, uninvolved. Have you ever seen that in a classroom? Sometimes, and then the outcomes, not seeing the benefits, inability to take in information versus gratitude as the innermost attitude, right? Thoughts, positive, full of wonder, happy to be alive, self-talk. Aren't I lucky to be here? Words, positive tone, it's just the opposite, but the important are the outcomes, able to be more focused, able to think more clearly, able to understand deeply. Okay, here's a quote from a student who said this, once I had an innermost attitude of gratefulness, I found the world to be a different place. The class was not as long and I seemed to be more attentive because I was trying to use my time there more wisely, right? What a transformation that could make in the whole educational enterprise. Okay, what else do we have? There's a lot of other outcomes that are relevant, particularly to youth and young adults. We often decry rampant materialism and it's awful, it's hijacking the minds and pocketbooks and checkbooks and credit cards of the young, and so we found that gratitude and materialism are negatively correlated. The more grateful one is, the less likely they are to define themselves in terms of their purchases, in terms of materialism. They're less likely to be envious of others, what others have and they don't have, the less likely to measure success in terms of material gain. They just feel more safe, secure, complete, making it less likely they have to find their sense of meaning or purpose through purchases. Also, she looks pretty happy, right? But there's the same person after the credit card bills came in, it's amazing. It doesn't even look like the same person anymore. It's a little transformation. Gratitude has been found to actually help prevent or buffer people from depression. Not necessarily serious clinical depression, but at least mild to moderate forms of depression. Gratitude can work as a way of reducing the negative effects of depression. It's been found that grateful people have a built-in bias toward the positive. The problem with depressives where they have a built-in bias toward the negative, the more easily, the more readily pulled to mind negative events, times in which they've been insulted by someone, complaints, resentments, and so on. And that tends to foster and maintain a state of depression. So gratitude just as opposite drives all those things out, makes it possible to at least have lower levels of depression and people who may be prone or maybe going through situations that could result in a depressive episode. Less likely to be isolated. Loneliness and depression go hand in hand, especially in young people. And so gratitude is a relational emotion. It's a relationship strengthening emotion. When you feel grateful, you recognize other people are supporting you. They care about your well-being. That's powerful information there that feeds a sense of, hey, I guess I'm a person of worth of value, less likely to be isolated, more likely to have a positive opinion of oneself. Well, gratitude is good for this reason too, that we like it in other people. So they had a focus group, high school students got together and a leader and they sat around and they talked about what do you really want in a partner? What qualities, characteristics would you like to see in a person that you might consider getting married? And several virtues or strengths of character were noted, and the following were included in this list. The most desirable characteristics, wisdom, spirituality, kindness, forgiveness, and gratitude were seen as desirable traits in a romantic partner published in the Journal of Adolescents. How many of you saw the movie, The Notebook? Nobody will admit to it. Oh, I don't blame you, okay. Anyway, good qualities, we want them in other people, we want them in people that we wanna spend our lives with. Usually, you don't often hear about gratitude, you want people who are kind and honest and hardworking and so on, but gratitude now makes these sorts of lists. Again though, we've gone some of it wrong. Gratitude is not just a feeling, it's not just a route, a pathway to happiness, but it does something. In fact, gratitude motivates people in various ways. One is that it motivates generosity, it motivates compassion, it motivates giving, it motivates forgiving, these are all good things, quite beyond self-directed happiness. Again, the notion is you can't force an emotion, and I'm not again going to debate the philosophers talk about this, but the consensus seems to be that it's, you don't have that much control. You can control your thoughts and the feelings follow the thoughts, but the feelings don't arise apart from those thoughts. The thoughts comes first and then the feelings come next. Can we cultivate gratitude? Well, I think so, but we need to treat it a little bit differently, not as a tantric or strategy, making a gratitude list is a nice start, but we've got to go beyond that. We need to look at the presence of what activates or elicits gratitude in daily life, which is when we receive benefit from someone. The typical situation is benevolence, right? You receive something from someone, you receive a benefit, you're going to feel gratitude as a response, not just to the gift, because a gift can lead to all sorts of feelings. I don't want this. What are they trying to do here by giving me this thing, you know? All I did was write a check, right? We have all sorts of attributions about their behavior, but if we recognize the cost involved in the gift, he, Simmons, jumped in there to save my life, right? Some cost to himself. I'm going to be very grateful. The intentionality, well, if he knew who it was, he didn't intend to rescue me, right? He wouldn't have rescued me, but he did intend because he didn't know, so there's intentionality there, and the value of the benefit. Yeah, I want to live, so there's some benefit to that. So to the degree that you have those three factors, the three critical factors, you're more likely to have the state of gratitude. So training for gratitude, and I think gratitude is a skill, like other skills, it's a skill set. It has to be trained, and training largely involves these three elements, helping people to recognize when someone provides them with help, the costuleness of that help, the intentionality of the helper, or the benefactor, and the value of the benefit that it means something. It has some worth, it has some value. Okay, now, kids actually, young adults may actually find it a little bit easier, okay, to recognize the benefit, to recognize the goodness. Gratitude is really a recognition, so again, this would go against the idea that it's about a feeling, because recognizing is how you think about something, right, you recognize, you think about it, you acknowledge it. Gratitude is about knowing, it's about remembering, thinking and thanking are very similar words, and so on, and so it's really about how we look at life, the benefit, the gift, there's a value, and then the benefactor has an intentionality. And some would say it's actually easier for kids to make these attributions, all right, because adults, it's sometimes difficult to accept a gift from someone, right, because of all sorts of baggage. We have hang-ups with allowing others to be gracious toward us. Oh, I don't want to be indebted, I don't really deserve this. We start to question their motives, their motives, and so on, and we wonder how we're gonna repay the gift, but it doesn't happen that way with kids a lot of the time. Grandma gives her grandson and granddaughter kids a trip to Disneyland, let's say, right, and they don't worry about, how am I gonna repay this gift to grandma? What should I do? How much money do I have in my piggy bank, you know, and so on, and they don't think in those terms, right? Maybe, you know, we need to remind them some time if they're not thankful right away, but they're not so worried with repaying the imbalance, there, with getting rid of it, the sense of indebtedness. I mean, if they were, as soon as they got their first job, right, they'd be riddled with so much anxiety about all the things that we did for them, right? They would try, how can I repay you, right? For all the meals and all the diapers and all this and that that we gave them, there'd be no way that the debt would be so immeasurable because they're not keeping track, like we do as adults, keeping track of benefits, how can we repay this benefit and so on. So maybe in that regard, in terms of these recognitions, it might be somewhat easier for kids to feel gratitude because they don't have the same blocks that we have. When does gratitude emerge in life? The image didn't quite come out as good on the projector as it does on the computer. If you wanna see a nice picture afterward, I'll show you in the computer. But anyway, so this was our younger son when he was, where's Yvonne? How old was he? Four months old, right? Okay, so now when you look at a baby with expression, pause of expression, you don't say, oh my, he looks grateful, right? It's just not attribution we make about kids, right? We don't attribute the feeling state of gratitude when we see a facial expression on an infant, you know? We say they look happy, right? Or what else? Happy, there's not much differentiation, you're right, about positive feelings when they're kids. Surprise, joy, some kind of positivity, right? And so on. So we know they don't have the ability yet to feel these complex social emotions which require a great deal more mental work that's not capable in a four month old or a four year old for that matter. In fact, it's not until somewhere between the ages of seven and 10, it's been hypothesized that the capacity for gratitude emerges because one has to have a fully developed theory of mind to know that other person has intended to benefit them, that there's some cost to the gift that the person has given, they have to have that able to take that perspective taking, right, and so on, this may actually not occur until 10 or 11. If I was talking to a colleague in the hallway the other day and he says some adults never develop this capacity either to have this sense of perspective taking so they never have the ability to feel gratitude, but anyway, so it doesn't occur very early in life but yet the building blocks are there, I think much like language or other skills, the music and so on, the building blocks are there, it's just a set of skills that has to be learned and taught and transmitted through various ways. Now it's interesting that gratitude has been largely ignored in the social sciences and but it's been ignored when it comes to developmental psychology, especially in ethics and the development of different virtues. This is a book, Kids Guide to Building Character and I looked up and down this list and I counted them and there's 28 virtues here and all good stuff like courage, friendship, justice, equality, kindness, where's gratitude? Now I don't see it, it's not there, right? I guess it's not that important. So what they're saying, 28 others are on the list but gratitude is it. Now to be fair some character education programs do have room for gratitude but more do not than actually do. So but I think the situation is changing as the research gets out there and teachers, students, parents, educators, anybody who's concerned about next generation learns that gratitude can make a difference, is important, has been overlooked, has been marginalized but does make a difference. Let's figure out what to do about it. There's lots of forces that work against it. One is the belief that kids don't have the capacity for gratitude, that when they're ungrateful it's like the worst thing possible as Shakespeare said in King Lear, right? Being gratitude, right? More hideous than a child in the sea monster, right? It's like the worst thing possible, right? Shakespeare said, so very powerful statements. The assumption being a stereotype being that kids are notoriously ungrateful, they gotta be taught to be grateful. I'm not so sure again that's the case in some respects it's easier, some respects only because of mental limitations due to developmental stages. All right, so now I'm gonna make a little transition and talk about some of the obstacles to gratitude. Gratitude seems like a good thing, whether it's a feeling, whether it's a tactic for happiness doesn't matter, whether it's a trait or disposition that can be cultivated seems like a good thing, right? Why is it so difficult for many people? And it is, it doesn't come easier naturally. I could be wrong about this but I think it is, it doesn't come easier naturally to people. By the way, if I'm wrong, by the book anyway on the way out, it's still good, I could be wrong. There's a number of obstacles about gratitude that get in the way and I wanna focus tonight, most of the rest of the 20 minutes or so that I have on the first one there because that's the one that seems to get a lot of interest particularly amongst parents, that sense of entitlement, sense of resentment, very much opposite to the state of gratitude. There's others as well which are interesting psychologically and so on, all of these get in the way. See, if we only focus on the positivity of gratitude, we're missing half the picture again. It's not just something we can focus on, develop and build because other stuff gets in the way that has to be taken into account. One, I'm gonna talk a little bit about entitlement. I'm actually wearing a Donald Trump tie tonight which just occurred to me when I saw him up there. So most people think of Donald Trump as a little bit narcissistic, right? Just a tiny bit, a little bit ego, right? And so on, a little entitlement. And he said this, he said, all of the women on the apprentice have flirted with me consciously or unconsciously. And whether they knew it or not, they still did it. And that's to be expected, you know? It's just kind of how I am, right? And they all kind of gravitate toward me. Now, I don't know, I never gave him our questionnaire to measure gratitude or where he would score, but I'm thinking he may have some difficulties with it because of the level of entitlement. So let's talk about that. You know, the very first research I did way back when I was an undergraduate was on the topic of narcissism. I thought, it was so interesting. It's the narcissistic people, you know? The self-admiration, grandiosity, and this seemed to be a theme at the time. This was in the 70s and people were talking about it as the me generation and so on. There was this rise and level of narcissism. Well, turns out that pretty much every generation thinks of it as the me generation, as the narcissism that no matter what decade it was, we all think that other people around us are increasingly narcissistic and self-centered and entitled and so on. But it's interesting with respect to gratitude because it just seems so much the opposite. If you had to pick one thing, that's the opposite of gratitude, you know? Could be resentment. They seem very similar but 180 degrees apart, okay? If you think of a symbol of gratitude, and this is kind of when people are asked sometimes to imagine image of gratitude, they think about receiving or having two hands like the image on the right. And the image on the left looks more like kind of entitlement. I mean, it's the same thing as a handout, but it has a very different image, a different connotation there. It's kind of like what I'm owed versus what I'm being given, you know? And so is it in fact antithetical to gratitude? Well, there's some interesting research and when you look at surveys, you know what's the number one thing that parents fear when they're asked with respect to your kids? You know, what do you worry about the most? Like their safety or their happiness or not getting into Stanford, you know? Or Berkeley, where's Jack? Sorry, Jack, Berkeley. Not getting to Berkeley. Moving back home after Berkeley, so on. No, it's not those things. They say it is a sense of entitlement. In fact, two thirds of the parents say it's their number one concern, is that my kids are too entitled. Interesting. What is entitlement? Well, entitlement is an expectation of special favors, special privileges over others, special exemptions from normal social, I don't have to do those things or I don't have to wait in line or people should recognize me for who I am. That's a sense of entitlement, okay? Well, I'm gonna talk, I found an interesting study recently looked at it within the academic domain. You know, professors, maybe teachers as well. Just notice a lot more sense of academic entitlement. I might do, you know, my students, right? I came to class, you know, or at least most of the time. So why am I not getting an A? You know, I got a vacation to go to. Surely you can schedule a makeup for me, this sort of thing. Oh, I missed class, send me your notes. What do you mean you're not gonna send me an email back at, you know, 3 a.m.? Aren't you available by email 24 hours a day? That sort of thing. Well, studies have shown that generalized entitlement and domain specific sense of entitlement have actually increased over a 10 year period in these three groups, children, adolescents and young adults, a 30% increase has been found over a 10 year period in this particular characteristic, which is very fascinating, but kind of worrisome at the same time. A couple of years ago, a book was published entitled The Narcissism Epidemic, you know, Living in the Age of Entitlement. And there's a couple of good quotes I wanna share with you from the book that the authors are two psychologists. By the way, one is at San Diego State and the other is, I think he's in North Carolina and Georgia, I think, on the East Coast. It's increasingly common to see parents relinquishing authority to young children, showering them with unearned praise, protecting them from their teachers' criticisms, giving them expensive automobiles and allowing them to have freedom, but not the responsibility that goes with it. Not that long ago, kids knew who the boss was and it wasn't them, it was mom and dad. And mom and dad weren't your friends, they were your parents. The sea change in parenting is driven by the core cultural value of self-admiration and positive feelings. Parents want their kids' approval, a reversal of the past ideal of children striving for their parents' approval. Interesting, right? I came out here in 1988 for a job interview. I remember the chairman of the psychology department was talking about this new movement in California, the self-esteem movement. And, you know, building kids' self-esteem was a big emphasis within the legislature. He asked me what I thought about it. I had never thought about it before. And, you know, I said, well, can't be a bad idea, you know, because we know when people have low self-esteem, they do all sorts of bad things to make themselves feel better and so on. And I didn't know a lot of the research at the time, and that is that self-esteem doesn't really cause those things, but it's more a result of things. You know, that self-esteem comes from accomplishments and so forth, and you can't just feed self-esteem independent of any sorts of outcomes. Anyway, I think that's one of the messages in the book. Well, academic self-entitlement is a more specific form which takes place in academic settings, of course. High rewards, modest effort, special considerations, impatience and anger. There's those examples that I gave you. So they actually measure this in a study of university students, journal of youth and adolescents. All right, it's kind of interesting. What this predicts, what causes it? What are the predictors of academic sense of entitlement? Well, there were four factors identified in the study. Increased parental pressure was one of them for good grades. Competition among peers and family members and comparison between family members. Why can't you do as good as so-and-so? You know, your cousin got all A's or test result comes back. Well, how did so-and-so in the classroom do? So it's irrelevant, but that's a typical strategy, and that was one of the factors. So the kids who had higher levels of academic sense of entitlement said these things. Competition, so competition, you have a heightened sense of achievement anxiety, so wanting to do well, feeling a failure if they didn't do well, and then getting material rewards for academic accomplishment, which we know drives extrinsic motivation, which is not the best way to sustain a behavior over time. Instead, you want internal. My parents encouraged competition in my family when it comes to grades, they said, my parents are always comparing me academically to my siblings and to my cousins. Well, you know, I said two-thirds of the parents said entombed was the number one. When they were asked what causes that, 85% of them said, we did. We caused this sense of entitlement. So I guess they were right, given the finding from this particular study. Here's some of the results, interesting, from that study. In general, they found the Asian students scored a little bit higher than whites, men a little bit higher than women. But this was interesting. Students who were scored high in this sense of entitlement actually engaged in more academic dishonesty, more likely to admit they had cheated on papers or on exams. There was no relationship with self-esteem and sense of entitlement. It was thought that if you have high self-esteem, you build up self-esteem, this gives you a sense of entitlement, right? So narcissism and so on, entitlement. But in fact, the two were unrelated. So it doesn't seem that it causes that. And there was no relationship with grade point average. So they weren't doing any better. They weren't doing any worse. They had more anxiety, more pressure, causing them to engage in more dishonest behavior. But it was not impacting their actual outcomes in terms of academic performance. Okay, some of the ideas, so I'm asked, where does this entitlement come from? And I don't know. I say I study gratitude, not entitlement. I mean, 30 years ago I studied narcissism. Maybe if I followed it up, I would know a little bit about it. But I can speculate and that's what we do sometimes. We have to speculate, but I try to find the data that support it. But I like to also look at some of the big thinkers in how they analyze a situation, the insights they can provide. And one of the fun things about being in the psychology of gratitude is that you take experts from various fields, politics, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, brain science and so on, and try to figure this stuff out. Well, there's a writer, a British writer, by the name of Theodore Dalrymple. Theodore Dalrymple, he's an author, journalist. He's a retired prison psychiatrist. He's kind of defender of traditional virtues. That's his pen name, by the way. His real name is Anthony Daniels. So he said he chose the name Theodore Dalrymple because he wanted a name that sounded, this is quoting him, suitably dispeptic, that of a gaudy old man looking out of the window of his London club, glass of port wine in hand, lamenting the degenerating state of the world. So that's what it sounds like, right? Dalrymple, Theodore Dalrymple. I always written for a city journal, the spectator, I guess, you know, London, British publications. Well, one very thought provoking essay you wrote about a year ago was entitled, It's All Your Fault. He's talking about resentment. He says the first thing is kind of a cultural commentator. The first thing to remark about resentment is that it never lets you down because it is a powerful and its capacity to stimulate the imagination in a similarly sour way. For example, if someone points out to a resentful person reasons why he should not be resentful, he will immediately come up with reasons why he should be. Interesting enough, okay. Here's a quote, again, kind of, you know, edgy little quote there, but I thought I would include it because it's a perspective that many people share. Another cause of resentment, I feel sure, though I cannot prove again because of, he's saying he's not blaming his parents, right? Because deficiencies of character bequeath me by my parents, is the spread of tertiary education, especially in such subjects as sociology, psychology, and anything to which the word studies may be attached. Indeed, it seems to me that they might all be usefully joined in one great faculty to be called the faculty of resentment studies. It would undoubtedly be the largest faculty in any self-respecting university and would easily pay for itself. Professors of resentment could teach such subdivisions of their subject as the art of rationalization, rhetorical exaggeration, preservation of a lack of perspective, suppression of a sense of irony or humor, and so on and so forth. Of course, entry requirements would be minimal. All you would have to do to gain entry is denigrate your parents at a public examination and there could hardly be found a child nowadays not able to do that. He says over the entrance to the faculty will be written, not the motto of the academy, know thyself, but rather, talk about thyself, reveal nothing. Remember that there is always someone better off than you and above all distinguish not between unfairness and injustice. What of the graduates of this institution? What happens to them afterwards? The best is for them to sink into outright unemployment, but if they find a job, it should be well below their capacities, which of course it will be if they have studied diligently. They will then be safely launched on a career of joyful or perhaps I should say satisfying misery is what he says, right? All right, so sense of entitlement, wherever it comes from, it's all around, it's in the air, it's easy to pick up on, it's not surprising that it's easily transmitted. What's the antidote? Well, I don't know, again, I think though if graduate has nothing to do with it, then I'd be surprised. That's got something to do with it. The sense of entitlement, and I write about this in my book, Thanks, a little bit about victimhood, victimization and how gratitude can be an antidote to that. Gratitude is a very empowering and liberating stance whereas victimization, you give up your power to someone else and why would you want to do that when there's an option? It's much more of a active than a reactive framework. The challenge becomes how to train for it, how to develop those skills, that skill set for gratitude. Again, not the feeling, but the disposition, the trait of gratefulness. How do you go from the ungrateful worldview to the grateful worldview where the stuff on the left is the way the grateful person talks? And if you look at the language they use, the grateful people, they have a certain way of framing reality, certain language they use where they talk about abundance and what life is offering me, all the gifts and satisfaction, what they've been given versus all the contrasting phrases on the right hand side. So I think words and language is a big part of it. In terms of training for gratitude, I think there's basically three or four steps. And I have a whole chapter in my book on 10 specific strategies, I don't want to go into that because I only have a few minutes left, but it comes down to identifying non-grateful thinking. Some of those are thoughts of entitlement. I deserve better circumstances. I used to have better circumstances, everybody else has better circumstances. This lecture is boring, it's tedious. Why do I have to pay for this stuff? All those thoughts are non-grateful thoughts that if you have those, it's going to support non-grateful thinking. Or thoughts like, well yeah, I've heard what you say and I've given many lectures now on gratitude and invariably there'll be one or two people come up afterward. I hear what you're saying, it sounds good and so forth and I think you're right, most people would be better off if they practice gratitude, but my particular situation is just so bad and so difficult and so unfair that there's no way I could practice gratitude. At least not now, maybe later. At some point, things will get better, I can practice gratitude. The reality of course is that it's independent of circumstances in that. You say, well, give it a shot now and see if it makes a difference. It might not, but also it might not hurt at the same time. That becomes much more of a gratitude supportive thought. Those are easy to generate. Is it possible to practice gratitude right now? Can I find some domain in my life to practice gratitude? Not perhaps an overnight transformation, but some small way to practice it and then it maybe can spread into other domains. Discuss the perils of resentment and benefits of gratitude. That's a great thing to do, particularly with older children, adolescents and so forth. You can lay it all out there on the line. I say, okay, this is resentment, this is gratitude. Here's the benefits or consequences of gratitude. Here's the consequences of resentment, okay? And they start to see that gratitude has a certain power, but so does resentment. Have a certain power as well. It doesn't take long to recognize the shortcomings of resentment and the benefits of gratitude. Once you get to see this idea of gratitude in a way that can be freeing or liberating, it's like, whoa, it's a whole new shift on reality. You don't wanna do the benefit counting necessarily, the gratitude light, the counting of blessings. Again, I think that's not altogether correct because for a person who is steeped in resentment in the first place, because guess what? Is it gonna be far easier for them to count all the resentments, all the ways in which people have been unfair, all the debts and so forth that they're owed is just because the power of that is just so much stronger than the power of the gratitudes may not be the best way to go about it. Okay, this one you can't see. With younger kids, you have to use different strategies. And the Wall Street Journal did an article and interviewed us last fall. There was some suggestions in there. There's so many ideas out there. I'm not the person to go for advice. There's, you pick up any parenting magazine in any November issue, and they're doing an article about Thanksgiving. How can kids become more grateful during Thanksgiving? Then there's one in December about gift giving, gift receiving and gratitude. And you know, and the stuff out there easily available. Some of it is I think validated by some of the research and others is yet because the research is very young, very new, but there are things that one can do that makes sense in one's own context, in one's own family. People will find different strategies that are more or less effective. One of the best ways with younger people is using visual reminders and cues because kids are very visual, very concrete. The abstract discussion about resentment entitlements and all that stuff and entitlements aside, and like, it doesn't matter, it doesn't make any sense to them. But this girl, she put up a tree in her room and she put things on the tree, decorated in the fall with things she was grateful for. Became an artwork. This family in British Columbia, the mom has gratitude jars and each one has a label, gratitude, abundance, blessings, I think is another one. And they fill it with money, loose change, spare change, they get home the other day, take money out of their pocket, put it in there. When the jars fall, they give it to some needy family within their community. So the kids learn about the benefit of giving, which ironically is one of the best ways to activate gratitude is through generosity. Those who use iPhones or iPads, there's apps for gratitude. This is the Happy Tapper app, right? You can actually do a gratitude journal on your iPhone or iPad. And I'm trying to read what it says on there. It's kind of the gratitude light idea, see things that make a person happy, but at least it shifts their framework so they're focusing on benefits instead of resumes. So all these are useful. Oh, this one, just about twice a week, I'll get an email from someone who's got the latest, a gadget or gizmo thing developed about gratitude. Some new movement, technology, right? Gratitude like happiness has become very marketable, which is ironic in a way, given gratitude materialism kind of go our opposites, you know, people get very materialistic about gratitude and trying to make some money. But I mean, their motives are there's many, you know, they want to do good things and spread the word about gratitude, I'm sure. This is a thank you token that you can get. It's about the size, I think like a poker chip. And I'm not sure what it's made out of. I know it cost a dollar to get one of those. And shipping is $6 for one of them, so, you know. So I'm not sure it's a good deal, but it's a nice little thing. You give out to someone when you're thankful to them and they have a number of other things on this website too. Gratitudetokens.com, I think it's called. There's bracelets, there's other devices you can give and those are all good as reminders because we need reminders because forgetfulness is one of the things that blocks gratitude. Okay, this is not gonna work. You know, I had a cool clip that I was gonna give you a break from listening to me and sure it was really awesome, great music, the four minute clip, but I learned, I didn't know that about Davis School, at least the high school campus, is that they disable YouTube. So students can't be watching YouTube when they're supposed to be in class or students, which is a good thing. It's a bad thing for my talk, but it's a good thing for the students, so I can't assure you this clip. But, sometimes go on YouTube and put gratitude is, and it's a nice little clip there about some of the other powerful thoughts and images and really words about gratitude, what gratitude is, what gratitude does, but most of which I've described already, so that makes the talk a little bit shorter. I'm gonna end with this testimony. I've studied many people, healthy, unhealthy. One of the projects I did was with people with neuromuscular disease, congenital or adult onset neuromuscular disease, post polio, muscular dystrophies and atrophies, a lot of pain, physical immobility, needing assistance and so on. This was a person, not in my study, but someone with a similar disease. He had an advanced form of Lou Gehrig's disease or ALS. He's 49 years old and got to the point where the illness, the disease has drained most of the movement out of his body and he calls his wife and his daughters over to his bed and he wants to tell him something because he suspects that the end is near and so he says that he wants them to write this down, something to be known for. He says, I believe that life is not always fair. It has certainly been true in my case. You think he's going to be on that side of kind of resentment, you know, all the bad things that happened. I didn't deserve all of these things. He does say, life has not been fair. It's not fair that I should have had wonderful, caring, supportive parents who raised me right and brothers and sisters that are there when I need them. It's not fair that I should be blessed with a beautiful, talented wife and together we should have two equally beautiful talented daughters who make us proud daily. He said, no, life is not fair. Why should I have had so many years of good health and energy and good friends to camp and backpack with through the years? ALS is a terrible disease, but it does not negate the rest of my life. He died two weeks after this, after he gave his testimony to his wife and to his daughters. He said, well, he made that choice, right? He didn't have to choose that graduate as an option, but he did, even in the context of that life situation he was in. So it comes down to this choice, to training his mind, to looking for those opportunities, to acknowledging benevolence, all right? That seems to be available to everyone, but at the same time, recognizing all those obstacles that tend to block this from happening easily or naturally to most people, for most people. And I'm no exception there. I study gratitude because I want to get better at it. You know, we do that as psychologists. We find something we're bad at and we try to get better at it, you know? I have friends that they're kind of grudge-holding. They study forgiveness and others have trouble with their memory. You know, they forget everything, they study memory and so on, and so it is with me in gratitude. All right, I had a quote from Ben Stein about riches and this was another kind of economic metaphor or analogy. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, something you may be familiar with him, certainly knew about adversity and suffering and in the concentration camps was assassinated for plotting to kill Hitler, died at the age of 39. And in his autobiography, he says this about gratitude. He says, in ordinary life, we hardly realize that we receive a great deal more than we give and that is only with gratitude that life becomes rich. And I think that is a good way to wrap it up. So you've been a great audience. Thank you for your attention. Appreciate it. Thank you. First of all, thank you for sharing your knowledge with us this evening. I think we all learned a lot. I think that there are probably some folks in the audience who are looking for some actionable ideas, things that they can really do. So when we talk about keeping a gratitude journal, what advice do you have for someone who wants to start? I just sort of haphazardly in my little iPhone notes started tapping out things that I was grateful for. But do you have any guidelines or advice for someone who wants to get started? Well, there's no perfect way to do it. In fact, pretty much most things that people do will be effective, but there are some ways in which it'll be more effective than other ways. So for example, people say, well, do I need to do it a certain time of the day, for example, when I first wake up, when I go to sleep? Again, it really depends upon you and when is the best time of the day. Some people like to evaluate their day as a whole before they go to sleep and find that it actually helps them calm them down, puts them in a good frame of mind to sleep if they do the last thing they do. Some people want to start their day with writing down what they're grateful for, what they have to look forward to that day, kind of gratitude in advance. Gratitude is usually looking back, but we could say, okay, I'm grateful that I have these things to do today or I get to do these things today. They find that gets them off to a great start with lots of energy. So time of the day doesn't seem to matter that much. What does matter is how often people do this and what they write about. So if you're having trouble coming up with things to write about, you need to work a little bit at that. So the people who benefit the most are the ones who are the most creative, who come up with more and more specific and unique things, more detailed, the better, the more they elaborate about something, the better. So I will never forget the lady who contacted me from Salt Lake City, who had been keeping gratitude journal for nearly 20 years and she had 18,237 specific gratitudes on her list in her journal. Everything was unique. There were no repeats, she said. I never read through it, I mean still be doing it. But she said, now you have to get really specific to be that original. And she said, so some days I would write things like, well I'm grateful that I didn't grind up any spoons in the kitchen disposal. Well, okay, that's fine, it doesn't matter. We're not here to critique somebody's list, but then at the other extreme is someone who every day for three weeks said, I'm grateful for my cat, my dog, and my apartment. And day two, my cat, my dog, and my apartment. 21 straight days, and the cat was always first. So the dog probably didn't feel great about that. I think she probably didn't benefit as much because she didn't elaborate on those three things. So degree of elaboration is important, not necessarily 18,000, but not necessarily the same three every day. So how you write, how much you elaborate, how often you do it, studies are showing that actually, and this is kind of counterintuitive, if you gratitude journal every day, you don't necessarily benefit as much as those who do it every other day, or three times a week. Maybe it's because it becomes more of a burden. Maybe because people find it hard to come up with things on a regular basis. Maybe it wears off. They experience what's been referred to as gratitude fatigue. They say, oh, I gotta do this list again. I got all these other lists I gotta make and do. Now you want me to do this gratitude list? Well, I'll do it tomorrow, whatever. And that's fine, because we found one study just doing it once a week had an effect. So as long as it's on a regular basis, as long as it's done intentionally and deliberately, it can be effective. And then sustained over time. Like any practice, like any exercise, physical exercise, it's no difference. It has to be sustained over time. Obviously, we have so many parents here in the audience, and this question is, what are some practical ways to cultivate gratitude in kids beyond gratitude journal? Right, so again, it depends on the age. What you would do with teenagers wouldn't be what you'd do with a four-year-old, for example. And again, we know that some of the techniques that can be used with adults can be used with older kids, with adolescents. So journaling certainly works well, or relying on some of the new technology that can be used, whether it's the iPhone app or something comparable, can be effective too, with the kids who resonate toward technologies for keeping in touch with friends and expressing gratitude, perhaps. Again, with younger kids, the visuals work the best. So some of the things we suggested in terms of having practices that are real, very concrete, maybe it's artwork, maybe they can find some music that makes them feel gratitude. Maybe just going to bed at night, and the last thing they do, like my collaborator and colleague who does the work with kids in schools and his wife is the principal, that he would just, when the kids were very small, just lay in bed and they would talk about three things that went well during that day. Not get too heavy into the ethics of gratitude, but just kind of focusing on things of which that might activate a sense of gratefulness or at least happiness. And again, the younger kids won't distinguish that finally between these different emotions. Having practice, having rituals, that can be connected to different holidays and different festivals throughout the year. Again, it's different for different families, but it has to be age-appropriate. It has to be sensitive to the needs of the kid. In terms of they, as you get older, they want to feel more a part of it. They want to give them more sense of that. Okay, you're going to design the gratitude practice for today or this week, whatever it is, right? And a sense of ownership. Because as they're getting older, they're trying to de-individuate, to push away from us, right? Say, well, the gratitude is something we're all doing together and gratitude implies a sense of dependency and they don't want that. They're moving in the other direction. So make them think that it's their idea of the gratitude practice, even if it's something you thought of last week. No, it's okay, you know, this is great. This is your idea. We'll do it. A sense of ownership, I think, can be very helpful at that age. So again, it depends on the age. We have some similar questions. Questions about whether research has been done just across different subsets of people. This one, for instance, is, has gratitude been researched in people with truly tragic lives, such as those who've suffered through famine, plague, or major loss of life? Another question is, have you looked at the independent impact of a faith system on the relationship between gratitude and quality of life? And another asks us about political parties as well. What can you tell us about different groups of people being studied? So politics, religion, was the first one? Thanks. Good. Folks who have experienced something truly tragic. Well, that's a little bit easier. So within the, yeah, I mean, psychologists, you know, love to chase after people who've been through tragedies of various sorts, probably because they study coping, right? How people cope with adversity and loss and suffering. And so most of the research that is relevant to gratitude in those contexts is not explicitly a gratitude study, but in the context of how people deal with disasters in terms of coping responses. Do people turn to their faith? Do they use prayer? Do they seek social support? Do they count their blessings? Do they imagine how things could have been worse? For example, do they engage in what we call counterfactual thinking? You kind of negate what happened. You think about how worse things might be than they actually are. How things could have turned out different, for example. So in those contexts, they do find that, you know, that people do use gratitude as a coping response in dealing with tragic dealings of the diversities. Yes, I'm bad off, I lost my house and I gave talks in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina and people would come up and say, you know, how the hurricane really deepened their sense of gratefulness for life. And this one woman, she lost everything. Her home, she had several buildings on her property, animals, pets all wiped out, but she never became more grateful. And the example you shared with us before, going through a difficult time, you can really deepen a person's sense of gratefulness and having that comparison with how bad things might have been or thankful for the help or support you get or the skills and strengths you develop as a result of going through that are all good grounds for gratitude. Faith certainly contributes to gratitude. I'll give many talks to faith-based organizations and churches and gratitude is an element that you find across the world's religious systems. It's a ethic that's emphasized in every major religion. From the beginning of time, people who have worshiped a God, who have placed faith in a God, have found ways to express gratitude toward that God. So it cuts across religious traditions. Political party? Political party? Well, it knows no boundaries, right? That's, I guess I get asked that because I gave a talk a couple years ago at Mondavi when the book of the year was The Geography of Bliss. Anybody come out for that one? With the author's name, Eric Weiner, right? And so the discussion before his talk of the afternoon was about politics and happiness. And so they asked me, because that was the happiness researcher, and I was interested in some of the correlations between political affiliation and happiness. And so I said what research was showing, which didn't make me very popular in the audience. And so I think we'll go on to the next question. Gratitude is typically thought of as a more traditional value because you're conserving something good in the past. So I'll leave it at that and you figure it out. Okay. What about number of siblings? One of our audience members want to know, maybe someone who has a lot of brothers and sisters or fewer or maybe just a big family. How different people would be affected or the levels of gratitude? Whether you find that they are more or less grateful based on the number of siblings they have. I don't know, I'm not an expert in that area. I know there's been a lot of research on family constitution and size and birth order effects and so on, but I haven't seen any studies that have looked at patterns of levels of gratitude or actually any of these other characteristics like happiness or... We do know there's some genetic components that are going into gratitude. So there's some of it is heritable in the sense that, so if that doesn't mean anything because we get different things from our parents and so even within the same family, there's tremendous differences in kids and the levels of gratitude as there are differences between parents and the levels of gratitude and one of the great mysteries of course is how can children raised in the same family be so different in terms of personalities and our two are very different. I'm sure it's the case when I talk to parents and they'll say the same thing. I'll say one of them is really grateful and the other one's not so much so. How that happened, there's many factors that contributed to that dynamics between the two of them, differences in styles, gender differences, we know girls and then women, females throughout life are more grateful than our men which with a headline said, guys can't unlock that key because they don't have it and so on, so maybe that emerges early in life. Okay, you got a big laugh when you showed that slide of the hassles that some of UC Davis students dealt with like my roommates are filthy animals. So this question's very interesting. I was a married couple on Davis. That's really unfortunate. Was there any benefit received by those in the hassle groups for just being able to verbalize their hassles and kind of getting it out? Well, see the thing is with happiness is that most people are happy most of the time. You know, there's a, they call this the positivity offset. How's that for technical term? That is most people are above the neutral point on happiness. So if unhappiness to happiness went from a minus 10 to a plus 10, most people most of the time are around a five or six, some are seven. Some of the really happy people might be an eight or a nine. So even when you ask people to keep a hassle's journal, you're still dealing with people who are mostly happy most of the time and so their happiness goes down a bit because they're dwelling on all the negative things but they're still seeing lots of benefits and lots of good things and so it doesn't totally define who they are. I mean, certainly emotions and feelings and qualities, characteristics tend to be transmitted that way or tend to be spread, right? Contagious in that sense and that does affect us whether we hear the message of resentment and entitlement repeatedly, we start to believe that so forth what we expose our minds to influences our consciousness. But I mean, there's opportunities even without interaction to acknowledge benevolence. Most of the help benefit we receive we don't even see it, you know? People who, and I'm talking about people who are live today who make life better, whether they are emergency workers or firefighters or people protecting our safety, air traffic controllers, I mean, there are people out there who just by doing their job make life for us much easier and that's so easy to ignore that, to overlook it and one time I was on a trip from here to the East Coast and I thought of, I'm gonna think about all the people who made that trip possible, right? And it was just a staggering number. I mean, it was close to 100 people, right? From the moment I got up to getting to the airport, the people who checked me in, drove the bus and checked me into the hotel at night and the housekeeper who did the room, housekeeping and so forth, it was a staggering number that you don't normally see or aware of until you really take time to think about all those that support and sustain you. And so, I mean, that's benevolence, it's not someone handing you a gift per se, but you start to acknowledge the unseen behind the scene and nothing, that's what gratitude is. That's nice. This card says gratitude leads to happiness and the person wonders if the reverse is true as well, does happiness lead to gratitude? Well, there is a co-occurrence of positive feelings partly because I think how the brain is wired. Also because some of the circumstances that give rise to one set of emotions give rise to another. But I do think there's something specific about gratitude that happiness doesn't ordinarily produce because happiness is generally a broader, more diffused positive feeling, like you saw on the expression of that infant, right? Just looked happy, but didn't look grateful. And happiness is really what the emotion researchers call outcome dependent, that so good stuff happens you feel happy, right? But gratitude depends on our explanation for why that good thing happened, the attribution that we make. So we see it as happening, not because of something we did, but because we were given something or some benefit, we were lucky or fortunate or something just fell into our lap and that's an interpretation that we make that allows us to feel gratitude, right? So you can feel happy for lots of reasons. One of them is gratitude, right? But it doesn't work the same. It's not bi-directional. It's clearly that when you're happy, you're necessarily gonna be grateful. But when you're grateful, that generally does lead to happiness. But like I was trying to point, I was trying to make, it's a lot more than happiness. I'm going to close with this card. It says, no questions. I'm thankful for the information, humor and this great community. Thank you, and I will definitely buy your book. I like that one the best. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Thank you.